the price of love
by fiesa
Summary: She comes home. (There are so many ways of dying.) OneShot- Kiera Cameron, after the final episode.


**the price of love**

 _Summary: Kiera Cameron comes home. (There are so many ways of dying.) OneShot- Kiera Cameron, after the final episode._

 _Warning: -_

 _Set: Post S04ep06._

 _Disclaimer: Standards apply._

 _A/N: It's over._

 _Happy Easter Holidays! (2017)_

* * *

It's empty.

When she opens her hand, there is nothing inside. She could have sworn she had been clutching a little toy soldier, but the light of reality tells her otherwise. The marks her own fingernails have engraved into the palms of her hand are the only thing she feels. This – and the incredible strength of Alec's hand when he stopped her, held her arm.

 _It's the price we pay. In time, Kiera, you will understand._

There is nothing in her hand.

A short time ago, she could have sworn – but of course, she knows well enough how fragile and elusive happiness is. Save the world – lose your future. Travel to the past – bring your present with you.

 _Nowhere to run, Protector._

But no. Even that has been taken from her: she is no Protector anymore. She is not a mother anymore. Kiera Cameron always was a cop, and a mother. Now she left her friends and her duty in the past and the future has moved on without her. She has nothing left. Nobody knows her. Nobody _needs_ her.

She doesn't even have tears to cry.

 _(So many, many ways to die.)_

* * *

A million lights.

A million lives, and she hates every single one of them.

Mr. Sadler – Alec – gives her a penthouse suite with a view on Vancouver so beautiful she wants to smash the windows. It's difficult seeing her Alec in the old man before her, so difficult listening to him telling her what has happened the past 60 years. So difficult not to scream at the impostor to take off his mask: to reveal the young, kind, insecure genius she first met, the child in the adult she would get to know in the course of years. The Alec she knew so well – the voice of reason in her head, the cautioning glance at the periphery of her vision. But because she knows Alex, she knows it is Alec. The way he speaks, the way he walks – even his gestures as he explains his new world to her are the same.

 _If I only had known the price I would pay._

"What do you want to do, Kiera?" He asks, but she never answers.

It hammers through her head like a particularly annoying song stuck on repeat, but the only thing she can feel is numbness. Somewhere out there, a little boy is going to bed, is being read a story by his parents, falls asleep in their arms. Somewhere out there, the little boy wakes up in the morning, has breakfast, kisses his mother goodbye as he leaves for the school bus. Somewhere out there, Sam is alive. Maybe even multiple times, in different realities; Kiera knows the drill. It makes it all the more unbearable: a million worlds, created by a million choices and inhabited by a million people, and not one single one of them cares for Kiera Cameron.

Consequently, she doesn't care for them anymore. She's done enough.

 _(Except that she doesn't hate them. Can't, won't, not ever. These are the people she thought lost, the people Alex, Carlos, Jason and Brad fought so hard to save. The people Betty and Lucas and even Travis died to protect. The people_ she _died to protect, once upon a time.)_

It would be so nice if the world, one time in her life, recognized her sacrifice.

* * *

"I'm here, if you want to talk," Alec says. His gaze is calm, honest and kind, and Kiera can see his younger self reflected in his eyes. "Kiera. You know I'll always listen to you."

Strange, but he is the last person she wants to talk to. He was the only one she trusted, back 80 years and an eternity ago. _Who are you?_ Now, she can barely stand his sight. He knows, and his smile carries a brittle edge. She hates herself for putting it there, but she can't help herself.

It is a reoccurring theme in her life that the people she needs to talk to the most are those she cannot talk to anymore.

* * *

Edward Kagame takes her to Carlos' grave.

"Until the end, the only thing he regretted was that he didn't get to meet you again."

There is nothing more to add to this.

The grey stone says "Carlos Finnegro" in dark-golden letters, other than that and the dates, there is nothing on the grave stone to distinguish it from its neighbors. Dark-red, wild roses bloom; summer in Vancouver. Their scent is intoxicating.

 _Kiera._

"Carlos."

The wind in the branches sounds suspiciously like an accusation.

 _But you never where that way,_ she thinks, distantly. _You never blamed me for my choices._

No, he did not. Carlos was everything that was good; kind, polite, protective of her and yet ready to let her make her own decisions, let her live her own life. Carlos, warm, strong Carlos who became her conscience until she could not accept anymore what had become of her, and who still never once looked at her with reproach. Carlos, who might not have thought all her decisions acceptable but who had supported her, nevertheless, and if he hadn't, it had been for her own good. For her, only and ever for her, because she cannot remember him ever doing something for the sake of his own protection, his own selfishness. Maybe that was because Carlos never was selfish, either. Of the two of them, he definitely was the better cop. Of the two of them, Carlos definitely was the better man: Kiera Cameron's conscience.

"I'm sorry," she whispers to the trees, but only the wind answers.

* * *

Night in Vancouver.

 _Goodbye._

 _This time you mean it, don't you?_

So many stars, and so many lives, and so many years between herself and the past. So unbridgeable the distance between what she wishes for and what she can't have.

 _I love you, Mommy!_

 _I love you too, sweetheart._

"Insomnia, Kiera?"

She'd tell him to disappear from her mind, but no matter how wretched she feels there are some people she just cannot scare away.

Alec Sadler is one of them.

 _(She's already lost too much.)_

* * *

"Aren't you kinda moping?"

"Excuse me?"

"I won't, Protector."

Sharper than necessary: "Don't call me that. I'm not a protector anymore."

"You'll always be one. It's in your blood."

Kiera remembers Julien as an angry boy, not as this calm man he has become. It's not easy to bring together the pieces: three times Theseus, three different endings. Her head spins, trying to wrap her mind around parallels and paradoxes and possibilities.

"Anyway, I'm not moping."

"You haven't left this place in days."

"I'm not feeling well. If you just came here to argue, get lost."

"Me?" He looks mock-hurt, the perfect addition to his mock-hurt voice. "You know I never argue."

Kiera shoots him a look, nothing more, and he smirks. "The same."

"The same what?"

"The same as before."

They sit in silence. She never thought she'd enjoy his company, and she doesn't, but this is… _calming_. Finally, he gets up and leaves. Turns around in the door.

"You taught us that the future wasn't inevitable. Tell me: if we can change the future, is the past ever buried and dead?"

And then he leaves.

* * *

Alec explained it to them once, she thinks.

More specifically: explained it to Lucas, Julien and her, but she hadn't been listening properly. Too occupied with Brad, with the soldiers from Kellog's future, with Kellog's traitorous mind. Too occupied by the possibility of returning. There had been too much else – Brad, Kellog, Lucas and Carlos _(Sam, Sam, Sam)_ – and she hadn't listened.

At least this time, her error can be corrected.

She recalls the conversation, painstakingly. Runs through it again and again until she knows it by heart, and understands.

"But if we change the future, won't we all cease to exist?"

"No, of course not. The future is full of possibilities. Every decision creates a new path. And all these myriads of paths exist next to each other."

"And they never intertwine?"

"Who knows?"

"So what about the past?"

"What about it?"

"What happens if we change the past? Will our future cease to exist?"

 _(She should have listened. This had been about her, and Sam, and dammit, she should have–)_

"Of course not. There will be another path, then, a new one, yet untraveled, and a new future will grow from it."

"… And what about her?"

And Kiera had been too occupied to realize the meaning, the glances Carlos and Alec shared, the worry in their eyes. _Two men_ , she thinks. Two men, so different and yet so similar, two men who have shaped her more than even her own father. Two men who have become her best friends and her partners and her anchors. But of course, as always in her life, her realization comes too late and her guilt is not enough.

Suddenly she longs for Carlos more than she can say. For Carlos and for Alec, young, disillusioned and yet full of hope.

God, how much she misses them.

* * *

"Kiera."

It's still the same voice, always will be. She realizes it only now. The voice of the seventeen-year old boy, the lost boy, the brilliant boy: it hasn't changed at all. From the depths of his heart Alec still speaks to her with the same voice that once greeted her, distance and time from home, and she has learned to trust that voice. She has learned to love it. She has been guided and scolded and called frantically, and she has not noticed how this boy has taken up a place in her heart that will forever be his.

 _(Forever, no matter times and ages and distances and appearances.)_

Of course she realizes it only now. When would it ever be simple?

"You really aren't ever going to be happy here, are you?"

How could she? Everything reminds her. Of. Reminds her and reminds her and reminds her and she runs until she collapses just to blend out the memories in her head. Her CMR is a curse: she remembers _everything._

No.

No, she won't ever be happy here: not when Sam is closer than ever and yet so unreachable. Not when Alec hasn't changed but has. Not when everything she sees and hears every day reminds her of what she once had – and hadn't realized, at that moment, how precious it was – and of those people she lost.

And maybe, maybe, this is stupid. Maybe it's a cowardly cop-out. Maybe she just runs from the consequences of her actions and decisions. Maybe she's just too tired to accept the change.

Alec shakes his head, his warm eyes are the same, ever the same. He is smiling. "I am so happy I had the opportunity to meet you again, Kiera. Thank you for everything, once again."

 _Thank_ you _, Alec._

He saves her, again and again and over and over, and he doesn't even realize.

* * *

Carlos is still trying to sort out the facts of the new case – and why the heck it would be a case worth having the captain of the Vancouver police force at the site – when he climbs out of his car. But it's the middle of summer, swelteringly hot without any relief in sight. During lunch, Alec had received a message and had little but run from the table, and Carlos hasn't seen the resident tech guy since then. On the other side of the car, Brad is surveying the crime scene carefully.

"Captain." A female officer greets him, her posture rigid. "The agent is already at the crime scene."

Carlos can feel his frown deepen. "What agent?"

"The FBI agent," the officer says, now frowning herself. "You didn't know? But…"

"It's alright, Officer Velasquez," he interrupts her, trying not to unload his annoyance on his cops. "It'll clear up."

He leaves her behind, follows the familiar hustle and bustle of trained personnel clearing the street, keeping onlookers at bay and searching for information and civilians trying to glimpse a _real_ crime towards the tent that protects the analysts from the blazing sun. There are a few people kneeling over and next to a body on the ground, only one of them not in the usual white coverall, and for a second he stops breathing because _dark hair pale skin grey-blue-green eyes_ –

But no, it's not Kiera. Of course not.

How could it? His former partner returned to her own time some time ago. Determinedly calling himself to order, he marches inside and towers over the stranger.

"Excuse me, until the coroner has finished his investigation-"

And Kiera looks up and smiles at him, and _she has not changed one bit._

Carlos opens his mouth, closes it again, opens it, and then, wordlessly, drops to his knees in order to join her on the ground. He cannot stop the huge grin spreading over his face, and he doesn't want to.

"Agent Cameron."

"Captain Finnegro."

They just look at each other, wordless, breathless, motionless. And then his phone rings. Kiera starts so badly it looks almost painful.

"Yes?"

A voice at the other end, too far away but tellingly upset. Carlos' eyes are still fixed on the woman next to him, unblinkingly.

"Yes, I know," he says. "She's right here. I'll keep you posted."

He drops the phone back into his pocket without ever breaking their eye contact.

"What are you doing here?"

It's a question she anticipated, and one she still is unable to answer. Instead, Keira shrugs. "I couldn't stay."

"So you decided to come back?" His voice is a growl now, something close to anger simmering under his skin, so concentrated she can feel it, too. "What happened? That place not good enough for you anymore?"

"Sam."

He softens, immediately, because Carlos never is angry with her for long. God knows he has every reason to be, and every excuse. But he cannot: for that, she loves him.

"He's…" She has to close her eyes, balls her fists. It's still as painful as it was when she first realized, has been like this every second of every day since she returned to the future. "He's not my son anymore."

And Carlos understands.

( _For this alone…)_

"I'm sorry."

"I know you are." She manages a laugh, watery as it might be. "I… I would like to stay. Really, this time. There's nothing to go back for anymore."

Carlos obviously remembers, it's written in his eyes.

"I'm so sorry."

"Stop." She turns away. Tries to compose herself, fails, turns back with tears in her eyes.

"I missed you so much. Please, can I stay?"

"Kiera," he says, and in his eyes she can read the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Honesty, and love. His arms around her shoulders are broad, strong and familiar. "Of course you can."

 _I'm so glad you're back._

She can hear Alec, now, too, welcoming, forgiving, accepting. _The future is only what we ourselves form it to be, you know. We have been waiting for you, Kiera. We always will._

And:

 _Welcome home._

 _Not yet_ , she thinks. _Not quite. But… perhaps someday._

This time, she is there to stay.


End file.
